Story of Seasons Review

Story of Seasons is the beginning of a new chapter in the ‘Bokujo Monogatari’ series, a long-standing and top-selling farming/life simulation franchise. Though the series is reborn with a new name, it continues the well-loved traditions of customizable farms, animal care, marriage and child-rearing. When I played the game it reminded me of FarmVille but a way better version. The plot is pretty much straight forward. As the main character in the story, you move to a small farm town called Oak Tree Town. When you get to town there are four other farmers. They teach you what you need to know in order to get your farm going.

You start the game off by customizing your character. I loved all the different ways you could customize your character. It was almost too hard to choose how to customize your character because you can change their hair, eye color, skin color, and more. I have played games that claimed you could customize your character but didn’t offer a ton of options. I love all the different options because it helps to make the character your own. Story of Seasons offers other ways to make your farm truly yours. You pick how to expand your farm, what crops you cultivate, what animals you want on your farm and more. Renting public fields through the guild is a way to grow more crops. The drawback is that each field only grows certain crops and you can only rent them for a limited time.

The game is called Story of Seasons for a reason. Certain crops can only be grown in certain season. The first season that starts the game off is spring. You get a calendar in the game and each time you go to sleep starts a new day in the calendar. You play through all the four seasons in the game. Be careful and plan when you grow crops. If you plant crops on the last day of spring they will wilt the next day when summer starts. There many types of crops you can grow in the game such as fruit, veggies, wheat, rice, and flowers. Having a good variety of crops to grow comes in handy. You will use them in different ways such as recipes, feeding them to animals, selling them, and giving them away as gifts.

The tools you need to grow your crops are given to you free, but the seeds are not free. You can buy seeds from the general store and from the merchants that come into town. What I didn’t like is that the seeds weren’t cheap. As a matter of fact, nothing in Story of Seasons is cheap. Pretty much anything you buy is gonna cost you a pretty penny. It is easy to spend all your money just on seeds alone. Which means that you have to sell a lot of items to the traders in town. Another thing that bugged me was that the only way to make money in the game was to sell to the traders that come into town. It wouldn’t be a problem if the traders were in town every day. Guess what they are not. They are only in town on certain days during the month. You can easily end up waiting a week to be able to sell items.Story of Seasons forces you to manage your resources well.

There are a lot of things you can do in the game which I really liked. You can fish, build things, collect items, build relationships, join competitions, and more. There is so much to do that it often feels like you just do not have enough time to do it. If there wasn’t a lot to do Story of Seasons would get boring really quick. Luckily the calendar keeps track of what is going on each day. The calendar even tells you whose birthday it is that day. Knowing that can help you build relationships with people in town. Getting them a gift for their birthday can build affection but getting them the right gift is key. If you build up enough affection you can get married and have kids in the game.

Story of Seasons is the type of game you can play over and over. You never get bored because there is much to do in the game and different ways to get it all done. It is the type of game that you can keep for months on end and not get bored with it. Not to mention that it is a game that anyone can just pick up and play. How difficult or easy depends on the player. What really helps is that if you get stuck about something in the game you can pick up a book and read about it in the game. You get your own library of tutorials about everything in the game. The controls feel natural when playing Story of Seasons.Using the controls to do simple things aren’t difficult. For example, if you want to fish all you have to do is stand on the dock, take out your fishing rod and hit the A button.

Before I knew it I was addicted to Story of Seasons. I couldn’t put it down. It gets right what games like FarmVille got wrong. The graphics aren’t the most of impressive, but they fit the style of the game. The major downside for me was the lack of stamina in the first farming season. Even doing simple things like watering your crops takes away. That being said I have played simulation games and Story of Seasons is one of the best ones. What it does right makes up for what it lacks. It is entertaining, easy to get into, has a lot to do besides farming, and you can play with friends online. If you like games such as Harvest Moon, and FarmVille then this is the game for you.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo 3DS code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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